When I Move I'm Flailing Now
by Smokingbomber
Summary: Some heartclench and agita for continually frustrated Pryde and Wisdom fans, set in 2010. Tangentially involves MI-13 and Steve Rogers. Sorry for 'Excalibur' tag but there's literally no MI-13 tag and even if there were it wouldn't have everything I needed.


A/N: Takes place during 'A Diplomatic Incident', the Paul Cornell two-page MI-13 story set in the Heroic Age crossover.

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She watched him from the crowd in Washington, as flashbulbs went off everywhere and the buzz of the crowd quieted to hear the words Steve Rogers spoke to the Foreign Secretary. Some of his new team - partly their old team, partly faces she didn't know as well but she thought she'd come to like very quickly - stood to his sides, all watching Steve. They answered to him, now, though she didn't think Brian would ever actually _answer_ to him.

Maybe that was why he was there.

Meggan looked wild and strong in a way that echoed some of her old half-feral passions, freedoms she reveled in, freedoms she hadn't realized she could assert for herself, that she'd thought she owed to Brian - but that she now knew, somehow, were hers entirely. Something had happened to Meggan, something bad that came out good, so good, back when everyone thought she'd been lost forever. She'd grown up, the watching woman decided. She'd finished growing up. Still barefoot but wearing a bodiced and hooded dress like a wise-woman from the woods, carrying a staff like a wizard's, hair as delicately uncontrolled as it had ever been - Meggan had come into her own.

Dane's face was hidden from her view by his helm, but the cant of his body toward the woman at his side, and hers almost shyly toward his- despite the strength with which she held herself unconsciously- told the observer rather a lot, and she smiled slightly. She also had to admit that she was delighted by the chainmail hijab, and delighted further by the doctor's codename; it was a thing so right, because of everything she'd learned Britain _was_ , and _tried_ to be. She wanted to get to know the doctor. Maybe she would.

Inevitably, her gaze returned to /him/. He'd reached out to her to spill his broken heart across the ocean. Her, over everyone else he could have spoken to - but then, she thought, he couldn't have spoken to anyone else, could he? He had friends, he always had friends, his 'mates', and they'd always be willing to go to the moon and back for him even if they were completely human- but she didn't think he'd ever opened himself up with them like he had with her. Even after everything, he'd trusted her, had known she wouldn't throw any of his vulnerability back in his face.

She'd seen footage of the strength and determination and sheer willpower of the man in crisis after crisis, while she'd been... away. While she'd been presumed dead. After she'd sacrificed herself, not thinking she'd ever come back, with no time to talk to him first... and being honest, with no thought of him until it was far too late, and she was certain that even if she'd lived she'd never see anyone ever again.

She'd seen how he'd grown and grown and progressed and molded himself into someone who could shoulder the burdens he now carried, unfailingly, and she still felt incomplete and lost and angry and hopeless and small and flailing; all the things she'd done and accomplished were nothing compared to what she knew in her heart she _could_ do, and she had no idea how to get there when her childhood kept pulling her back and insisting that she stay and grow into place, fall into line, accept her destiny.

She watched him with the others even once the ceremony was over, and there was laughter around them and socializing and drinking. She watched him watch Steve and Brian shake hands, and she couldn't hear what was being said, but she saw the changes in the faces of his team - surprise and delight and honor. And she saw his shock and possessive anger; she saw his pleasant public mask come off and his team reacting to him with offence and aggravation and disapproval; she saw him get in Steve Rogers' face and Brian stiffen; she saw Brian's shoulders fall fractionally even as he held his chin high and gave some regretful answer-

-and she saw the rest of his team taking the man to task for making Brian give up what they all seemed to want so badly.

And then she saw him cave, and it was a cave-in, rocks tumbling to smash his pride and leave only fear and a fist around his heart, and she saw his other mask come up so fast to cover the depth of his feelings in irritability and hopelessly snide remarks while the rest of his team looked relieved and grateful and so terribly, terribly pleased.

The only real thing he could show them was anger, and maybe affection sometimes, and sometimes maybe even encouragement and that determination. He could be a leader for them. He could give them what they needed. He'd grown up so much from the bitterly shuttered person he used to default to, but...

No: he'd grown, but he was still alone.

As much as these people meant to him, he was still alone, and part of him was broken - as broken as she knew she was. They were both good at covering it up, and they both had their own unhealthy coping mechanisms, and they both had friends that drowned them in needs and demands, and tried to help, but couldn't make themselves look hard enough to reach the bottom. He was giving everything, over and over, and no one was there to catch him when he fell but another bottle of Scotch.

And there wasn't enough of her together in one place to fix that, nor any guarantee he'd want her to.

No one was watching her, and that meant no one would see her leave. She had to fix herself first, and had to trust he'd keep himself afloat, and that when she was done finding the surface again, he might at least be willing to talk to her again, honest and raw. She had to get to a place where she could be as honest and raw with _him_.

She vanished into the crowd, resigned to another damned bout with the place that wouldn't unhook its claws from her life.

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Seconds later, Pete looked away from where he'd been scowling with pointed aggravation at Meggan and Faiza, eyes scanning the crowd from behind his sunglasses. His brows furrowed, but he didn't see anyone he particularly recognised beyond reporters and politicians and a few plainclothes American heroes.

"What is it, Pete?" asked Meggan, her own expression not _alarmed_ , as such, but faintly worried. She abstracted for a moment, reaching out with her empathy, then told him in puzzled concern, "There's no danger right now."

"...nothing," Wisdom finally answered, not entirely willing to dismiss his unsettled, unfinished feeling as paranoia, but unable to find anything to pin it on. "Let's get this bloody reception over with."

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END NOTE: I couldn't make myself read the issues of anything else at that point, but I do know that the issue where Mags pulled Kitty and the bullet back to Earth happened at roughly the same time as the two-pager was published. Being honest, Kitty was probably quite drowned in X-Men at the time, but I also can't bring myself to find any fux to give. She went to DC and that's that. Welcome back to seven freaking years ago, ugh. Why does Marvel.


End file.
